In 2005, we fully complied with the provisions of the Code of Best Practice set out in Section 1 of the July 2003 FRC Combined Code on Corporate Governance, except for a brief period between 1 June and 24 August when John Sunderland was Executive Chairman and also a director of two other public listed companies (Code provision A4.5 states that an executive director should have only one external directorship in a FTSE 100 company). His acceptance of a position on the board of Barclays PLC was agreed in anticipation of his impending retirement as an Executive Director. Because of the brevity of the period during which the Code was breached, we consider that this is acceptable.
Our Description of Business contains information on our key financial performance indicators. We are currently reviewing our key non-financial performance indicators and, where necessary, will report on these next year if they are needed to better understand the development, performance or position of our business.
